CHAPTER II
“I AM glad to see you once more in the world,” said Lady Glenalvon; “and I trust that you are now prepared to take that part in it which ought to be no mean one if you do justice to your talents and your nature.”
KENELM.—“When you go to the theatre, and see one of the pieces which appear now to be the fashion, which would you rather be,—an actor or a looker-on?”
LADY GLENALVON.—“My dear young friend, your question saddens me.” (After a pause.)—“But though I used a stage metaphor when I expressed my hope that you would take no mean part in the world, the world is not really a theatre. Life admits of no lookers-on. Speak to me frankly, as you used to do. Your face retains its old melancholy expression. Are you not happy?”
KENELM.—“Happy, as mortals go, I ought to be. I do not think I am unhappy. If my temper be melancholic, melancholy has a happiness of its own. Milton shows that there are as many charms in life to be found on the Penseroso side of it as there are on the Allegro.”
LADY GLENALVON.—“Kenelm, you saved the life of my poor son, and when, later, he was taken from me, I felt as if he had commended you to my care. When at the age of sixteen, with a boy’s years and a man’s heart, you came to London, did I not try to be to you almost as a mother? and did you not often tell me that you could confide to me the secrets of your heart more readily than to any other?”
“You were to me,” said Kenelm, with emotion, “that most precious and sustaining good genius which a youth can find at the threshold of life,—a woman gently wise, kindly sympathizing, shaming him by the spectacle of her own purity from all grosser errors, elevating him from mean tastes and objects by the exquisite, ineffable loftiness of soul which is only found in the noblest order of womanhood. Come, I will open my heart to you still. I fear it is more wayward than ever. It still feels estranged from the companionship and pursuits natural to my age and station. However, I have been seeking to brace and harden my nature, for the practical ends of life, by travel and adventure, chiefly among rougher varieties of mankind than we meet in drawing-rooms. Now, in compliance with the duty I owe to my dear father’s wishes, I come back to these circles, which under your auspices I entered in boyhood, and which even then seemed to me so inane and artificial. Take a part in the world of these circles; such is your wish. My answer is brief. I have been doing my best to acquire a motive power, and have not succeeded. I see nothing that I care to strive for, nothing that I care to gain. The very times in which we live are to me, as to Hamlet, out of joint; and I am not born like Hamlet to set them right. Ah! if I could look on society through the spectacles with which the poor hidalgo in ‘Gil Blas’ looked on his meagre board,—spectacles by which cherries appear the size of peaches, and tomtits as large as turkeys! The imagination which is necessary to ambition is a great magnifier.”
“I have known more than one man, now very eminent, very active, who at your age felt the same estrangement from the practical pursuits of others.”
“And what reconciled those men to such pursuits?”
“That diminished sense of individual personality, that unconscious fusion of one’s own being into other existences, which belong to home and marriage.”
“I don’t object to home, but I do to marriage.”
“Depend on it there is no home for man where there is no woman.”
“Prettily said. In that case I resign the home.”
“Do you mean seriously to tell me that you never see the woman you could love enough to make her your wife, and never enter any home that you do not quit with a touch of envy at the happiness of married life?”
“Seriously, I never see such a woman; seriously, I never enter such a home.”
“Patience, then; your time will come, and I hope it is at hand. Listen to me. It was only yesterday that I felt an indescribable longing to see you again,—to know your address that I might write to you; for yesterday, when a certain young lady left my house after a week’s visit, I said this girl would make a perfect wife, and, above all, the exact wife to suit Kenelm Chillingly.”
“Kenelm Chillingly is very glad to hear that this young lady has left your house.”
“But she has not left London: she is here to-night. She only stayed with me till her father came to town, and the house he had taken for the season was vacant; those events happened yesterday.”
“Fortunate events for me: they permit me to call on you without danger.”
“Have you no curiosity to know, at least, who and what is the young lady who appears to me so well suited to you?”
“No curiosity, but a vague sensation of alarm.”
“Well, I cannot talk pleasantly with you while you are in this irritating mood, and it is time to quit the hermitage. Come, there are many persons here, with some of whom you should renew old acquaintance, and to some of whom I should like to make you known.”
“I am prepared to follow Lady Glenalvon wherever she deigns to lead me,—except to the altar with another.”
CHAPTER III
THE rooms were now full,—not overcrowded, but full,—and it was rarely even in that house that so many distinguished persons were collected together. A young man thus honoured by so grande a dame as Lady Glenalvon could not but be cordially welcomed by all to whom she presented him, Ministers and Parliamentary leaders, ball-givers, and beauties in vogue,—even authors and artists; and there was something in Kenelm Chillingly, in his striking countenance and figure, in that calm ease of manner natural to his indifference to effect, which seemed to justify the favour shown to him by the brilliant princess of fashion and mark him out for general observation.
That first evening of his reintroduction to the polite world was a success which few young men of his years achieve. He produced a sensation. Just as the rooms were thinning, Lady Glenalvon whispered to Kenelm,—
“Come this way: there is one person I must reintroduce you to; thank me for it hereafter.”
Kenelm followed the marchioness, and found himself face to face with Cecilia Travers. She was leaning on her father’s arm, looking very handsome, and her beauty was heightened by the blush which overspread her cheeks as Kenelm Chillingly approached.
Travers greeted him with great cordiality; and Lady Glenalvon asking him to escort her to the refreshment-room, Kenelm had no option but to offer his arm to Cecilia.
Kenelm felt somewhat embarrassed. “Have you been long in town, Miss Travers?”
“A little more than a week, but we only settled into our house yesterday.”
“Ah, indeed! were you then the young lady who—” He stopped short, and his face grew gentler and graver in its expression.
“The young lady who—what?” asked Cecilia with a smile.
“Who has been staying with Lady Glenalvon?”
“Yes; did she tell you?”
“She did not mention your name, but praised that young lady so justly that I ought to have guessed it.”
Cecilia made some not very audible answer, and on entering the refreshment-room other young men gathered round her, and Lady Glenalvon and Kenelm remained silent in the midst of a general small-talk. When Travers, after giving his address to Kenelm, and, of course, pressing him to call, left the house with Cecilia, Kenelm said to Lady Glenalvon, musingly, “So that is the young lady in whom I was to see my fate: you knew that we had met before?”
“Yes, she told me when and where. Besides, it is not two years since you wrote to me from her father’s house. Do you forget?”
“Ah,” said Kenelm, so abstractedly that he seemed to be dreaming, “no man with his eyes open rushes on his fate: when he does so his sight is gone. Love is blind. They say the blind are very happy, yet I never met a blind man who would not recover his sight if he could.”
CHAPTER IV
Mr. CHILLINGLY MIVERS never gave a dinner at his own rooms. When he did give a dinner it was at Greenwich or Richmond. But he gave breakfast-parties pretty often, and they were considered pleasant. He had handsome bachelor apartments in Grosvenor Street, daintily furnished, with a prevalent air of exquisite neatness, a good library stored with books of reference, and adorned with presentation copies from authors of the day, very beautifully bound. Though the room served for the study of the professed man of letters, it had none of the untidy litter which generally characterizes the study of one whose vocation it is to deal with books and papers. Even the implements for writing were not apparent, except when required. They lay concealed in a vast cylinder bureau, French made, and French polished. Within that bureau were numerous pigeon-holes and secret drawers, and a profound well with a separate patent lock. In the well were deposited the articles intended for publication in “The Londoner,” proof-sheets, etc.; pigeon-holes were devoted to ordinary correspondence; secret drawers to confidential notes, and outlines of biographies of eminent men now living, but intended to be completed for publication the day after their death.
No man wrote such funeral compositions with a livelier pen than that of Chillingly Mivers; and the large and miscellaneous circle of his visiting acquaintances allowed him to ascertain, whether by authoritative report or by personal observation, the signs of mortal disease in the illustrious friends whose dinners he accepted, and whose failing pulses he instinctively felt in returning the pressure of their hands; so that he was often able to put the finishing-stroke to their obituary memorials days, weeks, even months, before their fate took the public by surprise. That cylinder bureau was in harmony with the secrecy in which this remarkable man shrouded the productions of his brain. In his literary life Mivers had no “I,” there he was ever the inscrutable, mysterious “We.” He was only “I” when you met him in the world, and called him Mivers.
Adjoining the library on one side was a small dining or rather breakfast room, hung with valuable pictures,—presents from living painters. Many of these painters had been severely handled by Mr. Mivers in his existence as “We,”—not always in “The Londoner.” His most pungent criticisms were often contributed to other intellectual journals conducted by members of the same intellectual clique. Painters knew not how contemptuously “We” had treated them when they met Mr. Mivers. His “I” was so complimentary that they sent him a tribute of their gratitude.
On the other side was his drawing-room, also enriched by many gifts, chiefly from fair hands,—embroidered cushions and table-covers, bits of Sevres or old Chelsea, elegant knick-knacks of all kinds. Fashionable authoresses paid great court to Mr. Mivers; and in the course of his life as a single man, he had other female adorers besides fashionable authoresses.
Mr. Mivers had already returned from his early constitutional walk in the Park, and was now seated by the cylinder secretaire with a mild-looking man, who was one of the most merciless contributors to “The Londoner” and no unimportant councillor in the oligarchy of the clique that went by the name of the “Intellectuals.”
“Well,” said Mivers, languidly, “I can’t even get through the book; it is as dull as the country in November. But, as you justly say, the writer is an ‘Intellectual,’ and a clique would be anything but intellectual if it did not support its members. Review the book yourself; mind and make the dulness of it the signal proof of its merit. Say: ‘To the ordinary class of readers this exquisite work may appear less brilliant than the flippant smartness of’—any other author you like to name; ‘but to the well educated and intelligent every line is pregnant with,’ etc. By the way, when we come by and by to review the exhibition at Burlington House, there is one painter whom we must try our best to crush. I have not seen his pictures myself, but he is a new man; and our friend, who has seen him, is terribly jealous of him, and says that if the good judges do not put him down at once, the villanous taste of the public will set him up as a prodigy. A low-lived fellow too, I hear. There is the name of the man and the subject of the pictures. See to it when the time comes. Meanwhile, prepare the way for onslaught on the pictures by occasional sneers at the painter.” Here Mr. Mivers took out of his cylinder a confidential note from the jealous rival and handed it to his mild-looking confrere; then rising, he said, “I fear we must suspend our business till to-morrow; I expect two young cousins to breakfast.”
As soon as the mild-looking man was gone, Mr. Mivers sauntered to his drawing-room window, amiably offering a lump of sugar to a canary-bird sent to him as a present the day before, and who, in the gilded cage which made part of the present, scanned him suspiciously and refused the sugar.
Time had remained very gentle in its dealings with Chillingly Mivers. He scarcely looked a day older than when he was first presented to the reader on the birth of his kinsman Kenelm. He was reaping the fruit of his own sage maxims. Free from whiskers and safe in wig, there was no sign of gray, no suspicion of dye. Superiority to passion, abnegation of sorrow, indulgence of amusement, avoidance of excess, had kept away the crow’s-feet, preserved the elasticity of his frame and the unflushed clearness of his gentlemanlike complexion. The door opened, and a well-dressed valet, who had lived long enough with Mivers to grow very much like him, announced Mr. Chillingly Gordon.
“Good morning,” said Mivers; “I was much pleased to see you talking so long and so familiarly with Danvers: others, of course, observed it, and it added a step to your career. It does you great good to be seen in a drawing-room talking apart with a Somebody. But may I ask if the talk itself was satisfactory?”
“Not at all: Danvers throws cold water on the notion of Saxboro’, and does not even hint that his party will help me to any other opening. Party has few openings at its disposal nowadays for any young man. The schoolmaster being abroad has swept away the school for statesmen as he has swept away the school for actors,—an evil, and an evil of a far greater consequence to the destinies of the nation than any good likely to be got from the system that succeeded it.”
“But it is of no use railing against things that can’t be helped. If I were you, I would postpone all ambition of Parliament and read for the bar.”
“The advice is sound, but too unpalatable to be taken. I am resolved to find a seat in the House, and where there is a will there is a way.”
“I am not so sure of that.”
“But I am.”
“Judging by what your contemporaries at the University tell me of your speeches at the Debating Society, you were not then an ultra-Radical. But it is only an ultra-Radical who has a chance of success at Saxboro’.”
“I am no fanatic in politics. There is much to be said on all sides: coeteris paribus, I prefer the winning side to the losing; nothing succeeds like success.”
“Ay, but in politics there is always reaction. The winning side one day may be the losing side another. The losing side represents a minority, and a minority is sure to comprise more intellect than a majority: in the long run intellect will force its way, get a majority and then lose it, because with a majority it will become stupid.”
“Cousin Mivers, does not the history of the world show you that a single individual can upset all theories as to the comparative wisdom of the few or the many? Take the wisest few you can find, and one man of genius not a tithe so wise crushes them into powder. But then that man of genius, though he despises the many, must make use of them. That done, he rules them. Don’t you see how in free countries political destinations resolve themselves into individual impersonations? At a general election it is one name around which electors rally. The candidate may enlarge as much as he pleases on political principles, but all his talk will not win him votes enough for success, unless he says, ‘I go with Mr. A.,’ the minister, or with Mr. Z., the chief of the opposition. It was not the Tories who beat the Whigs when Mr. Pitt dissolved Parliament. It was Mr. Pitt who beat Mr. Fox, with whom in general political principle—slave-trade, Roman Catholic emancipation, Parliamentary reform—he certainly agreed much more than he did with any man in his own cabinet.”
“Take care, my young cousin,” cried Mivers, in accents of alarm; “don’t set up for a man of genius. Genius is the worst quality a public man can have nowadays: nobody heeds it, and everybody is jealous of it.”
“Pardon me, you mistake; my remark was purely objective, and intended as a reply to your argument. I prefer at present to go with the many because it is the winning side. If we then want a man of genius to keep it the winning side, by subjugating its partisans to his will, he will be sure to come. The few will drive him to us, for the few are always the enemies of the one man of genius. It is they who distrust,—it is they who are jealous,—not the many. You have allowed your judgment, usually so clear, to be somewhat dimmed by your experience as a critic. The critics are the few. They have infinitely more culture than the many. But when a man of real genius appears and asserts himself, the critics are seldom such fair judges of him as the many are. If he be not one of their oligarchical clique, they either abuse, or disparage, or affect to ignore him; though a time at last comes when, having gained the many, the critics acknowledge him. But the difference between the man of action and the author is this, that the author rarely finds this acknowledgment till he is dead, and it is necessary to the man of action to enforce it while he is alive. But enough of this speculation: you ask me to meet Kenelm; is he not coming?”
“Yes, but I did not ask him till ten o’clock. I asked you at half-past nine, because I wished to hear about Danvers and Saxboro’, and also to prepare you somewhat for your introduction to your cousin. I must be brief as to the last, for it is only five minutes to the hour, and he is a man likely to be punctual. Kenelm is in all ways your opposite. I don’t know whether he is cleverer or less clever; there is no scale of measurement between you: but he is wholly void of ambition, and might possibly assist yours. He can do what he likes with Sir Peter; and considering how your poor father—a worthy man, but cantankerous—harassed and persecuted Sir Peter, because Kenelm came between the estate and you, it is probable that Sir Peter bears you a grudge, though Kenelm declares him incapable of it; and it would be well if you could annul that grudge in the father by conciliating the goodwill of the son.”
“I should be glad so to annul it; but what is Kenelm’s weak side?—the turf? the hunting-field? women? poetry? One can only conciliate a man by getting on his weak side.”
“Hist! I see him from the windows. Kenelm’s weak side was, when I knew him some years ago, and I rather fancy it still is—”
“Well, make haste! I hear his ring at your door-bell.”
“A passionate longing to find ideal truth in real life.”
“Ah!” said Gordon, “as I thought,—a mere dreamer”
CHAPTER V
KENELM entered the room. The young cousins were introduced, shook hands, receded a step, and gazed at each other. It is scarcely possible to conceive a greater contrast outwardly than that between the two Chillingly representatives of the rising generation. Each was silently impressed by the sense of that contrast. Each felt that the contrast implied antagonism, and that if they two met in the same arena it must be as rival combatants; still, by some mysterious intuition, each felt a certain respect for the other, each divined in the other a power that he could not fairly estimate, but against which his own power would be strongly tasked to contend. So might exchange looks a thorough-bred deer-hound and a half-bred mastiff: the bystander could scarcely doubt which was the nobler animal; but he might hesitate which to bet on, if the two came to deadly quarrel. Meanwhile the thorough-bred deer-hound and the half-bred mastiff sniffed at each other in polite salutation. Gordon was the first to give tongue.
“I have long wished to know you personally,” said he, throwing into his voice and manner that delicate kind of deference which a well-born cadet owes to the destined head of his house. “I cannot conceive how I missed you last night at Lady Beaumanoir’s, where Mivers tells me he met you; but I left early.”
Here Mivers led the way to the breakfast-room, and, there seated, the host became the principal talker, running with lively glibness over the principal topics of the day,—the last scandal, the last new book, the reform of the army, the reform of the turf, the critical state of Spain, and the debut of an Italian singer. He seemed an embodied Journal, including the Leading Article, the Law Reports, Foreign Intelligence, the Court Circular, down to the Births, Deaths, and Marriages. Gordon from time to time interrupted this flow of soul with brief, trenchant remarks, which evinced his own knowledge of the subjects treated, and a habit of looking on all subjects connected with the pursuits and business of mankind from a high ground appropriated to himself, and through the medium of that blue glass which conveys a wintry aspect to summer landscapes. Kenelm said little, but listened attentively.
The conversation arrested its discursive nature, to settle upon a political chief, the highest in fame and station of that party to which Mivers professed—not to belong, he belonged to himself alone, but to appropinquate. Mivers spoke of this chief with the greatest distrust, and in a spirit of general depreciation. Gordon acquiesced in the distrust and the depreciation, adding, “But he is master of the position, and must, of course, be supported through thick and thin for the present.”
“Yes, for the present,” said Mivers, “one has no option. But you will see some clever articles in ‘The Londoner’ towards the close of the session, which will damage him greatly, by praising him in the wrong place, and deepening the alarm of important followers,—an alarm now at work, though suppressed.”
Here Kenelm asked, in humble tones, why Gordon thought that a minister he considered so untrustworthy and dangerous must for the present be supported through thick and thin.
“Because at present a member elected so to support him would lose his seat if he did not: needs must when the devil drives.”
KENELM.—“When the devil drives, I should have thought it better to resign one’s seat on the coach; perhaps one might be of some use, out of it, in helping to put on the drag.”
MIVERS.—“Cleverly said, Kenelm. But, metaphor apart, Gordon is right. A young politician must go with his party; a veteran journalist like myself is more independent. So long as the journalist blames everybody, he will have plenty of readers.”
Kenelm made no reply, and Gordon changed the conversation from men to measures. He spoke of some Bills before Parliament with remarkable ability, evincing much knowledge of the subject, much critical acuteness, illustrating their defects, and proving the danger of their ultimate consequences.
Kenelm was greatly struck with the vigour of this cold, clear mind, and owned to himself that the House of Commons was a fitting place for its development.
“But,” said Mivers, “would you not be obliged to defend these Bills if you were member for Saxboro’?”
“Before I answer your question, answer me this: dangerous as the Bills are, is it not necessary that they shall pass? Have not the public so resolved?”
“There can be no doubt of that.”
“Then the member for Saxboro’ cannot be strong enough to go against the public.”
“Progress of the age!” said Kenelm, musingly. “Do you think the class of gentlemen will long last in England?”
“What do you call gentlemen? The aristocracy by birth?—the gentilshommes?”
“Nay, I suppose no laws can take away a man’s ancestors, and a class of well-born men is not to be exterminated. But a mere class of well-born men—without duties, responsibilities, or sentiment of that which becomes good birth in devotion to country or individual honour—does no good to a nation. It is a misfortune which statesmen of democratic creed ought to recognize, that the class of the well-born cannot be destroyed: it must remain as it remained in Rome and remains in France, after all efforts to extirpate it, as the most dangerous class of citizens when you deprive it of the attributes which made it the most serviceable. I am not speaking of that class; I speak of that unclassified order peculiar to England, which, no doubt, forming itself originally from the ideal standard of honour and truth supposed to be maintained by the gentilshommes, or well-born, no longer requires pedigrees and acres to confer upon its members the designation of gentleman; and when I hear a ‘gentleman’ say that he has no option but to think one thing and say another, at whatever risk to his country, I feel as if in the progress of the age the class of gentleman was about to be superseded by some finer development of species.”
Therewith Kenelm rose, and would have taken his departure, if Gordon had not seized his hand and detained him.
“My dear cousin, if I may so call you,” he said, with the frank manner which was usual to him, and which suited well the bold expression of his face and the clear ring of his voice, “I am one of those who, from an over-dislike to sentimentality and cant, often make those not intimately acquainted with them think worse of their principles than they deserve. It may be quite true that a man who goes with his party dislikes the measures he feels bound to support, and says so openly when among friends and relations, yet that man is not therefore devoid of loyalty and honour; and I trust, when you know me better, you will not think it likely I should derogate from that class of gentlemen to which we both belong.”
“Pardon me if I seemed rude,” answered Kenelm; “ascribe it to my ignorance of the necessities of public life. It struck me that where a politician thought a thing evil, he ought not to support it as good. But I dare say I am mistaken.”
“Entirely mistaken,” said Mivers, “and for this reason: in politics formerly there was a direct choice between good and evil. That rarely exists now. Men of high education, having to choose whether to accept or reject a measure forced upon their option by constituent bodies of very low education, are called upon to weigh evil against evil,—the evil of accepting or the evil of rejecting; and if they resolve on the first, it is as the lesser evil of the two.”
“Your definition is perfect,” said Gordon, “and I am contented to rest on it my excuse for what my cousin deems insincerity.”
“I suppose that is real life,” said Kenelm, with his mournful smile.
“Of course it is,” said Mivers.
“Every day I live,” sighed Kenelm, “still more confirms my conviction that real life is a phantasmal sham. How absurd it is in philosophers to deny the existence of apparitions! what apparitions we, living men, must seem to the ghosts!
“‘The spirits of the wise
Sit in the clouds and mock us.’”